Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - Superstitions: Witch Marks, Touching Wood & Lucky Pants

Episode Date: August 18, 2023

Many of them pre-date modern religions and defy what science tells us about the world - from saluting magpies, to wearing lucky pants. Yet why do superstitions still have such a strong hold on our lives?Today we’re joined by Sally Coulthard, author of Superstition - the History of Common Folk Beliefs, to find out the origins and meaning behind some of our most common ritualistic behaviours.Why do we touch wood? And what does crossing our fingers say about the crossover between superstition and religion? Let’s go Betwixt the Sheets to find out.This episode was edited by Siobhan Dale, and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer Charlotte Long.If you're enjoying Betwixt please vote for us at the British Podcast Awards here: https://www.britishpodcastawards.com/voting. It would mean the world to us!Discover the past on History Hit with ad-free original podcasts and documentaries released weekly presented by world renowned historians like Kate Lister, Dan Snow, Suzannah Lipscomb, Lucy Worsley, Mary Beard and more.Get 50% off your first 3 months with code BETWIXT.Download the app on your smart TV or in the app store or sign up at historyhit.com/subscribe.You can take part in our listener survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/6FFT7MK Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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This is an adult podcast spoken by adults to other adults about a range of adulty subjects in quite an adulty way and you should be an adult too. Right, now that we've got that little bit out of the way, if you're still here, if you still want to listen, well, don't come crying to us if you get upset because, fair do's, we did warn you. Picture the scene.

You are walking down the street on your way to a restaurant, whichever restaurant you happen to like the best. Without a care in the world, and then suddenly you turn round the corner and there is a ladder leaning against, the wall of the building and going across your path. Do you walk underneath the ladder? Or do you avoid it at all costs? Then you arrive at the restaurant and upon seasoning your food, oh no, you've spilt the salt. Do you take a pinch and toss it over your shoulder? Or do you carry on without

even really noticing that you did it? It seems that for all of our modern scientific understanding of the world around us, we still lean on superstitions and rituals to reassure us and bring us comfort. Why is this? What does it tell us about ourselves? Why do we do it? Well today, Bertwix the sheets, we are going to find out. What do you look for a man? Oh, money, of course. You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you. I make perfect copies of whatever my boss needs by just turning a knob and pushing the fire. Yeah, social courtesy does make a difference. Goodness, for beautiful time. Goodness had nothing to do with it, dearie. And welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, The History of Sex Scandal and Society with me, Kate Lister.

If we look back in history to a time when our lives depended on a bountiful harvest, you can understand why someone might touch wood to channel the good fortune of the tree spirits, for example. Or in medieval times, when some people thought that black cats were the embodiment of the devil, you wouldn't have wanted one to have crossed your path. But in 2023, doesn't it seem a bit odd? more than a little sad that black cats are still the most likely to be put into animal shelters and crazy that houses with the number 13 on them are worth 3% less than their neighbours. Why do superstitions have such a hold on us?

What are the positive as well as the negative impacts that they have on our lives? And why did our ancestors rub the hands of dead people on their baby's faces? Joining me today is Sally Coulthard, author of Superstition, White Rabbits and Black Cats, and she is going to explain all about it. But before we get into the episode, I am here once again to ask you for a little favour. If you are enjoying betwixt, you could take a couple of seconds before getting into the episode to vote for us at the Listeners' Choice Award at the British Podcast Awards. If you follow the link in the show notes, it'll be done in a couple of seconds, and it really will make us so.

happy. And if you don't, it's terribly bad luck. That's true. I heard that somewhere. Right. Let's do this. And welcome to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only Sally Cullthard. How are you doing? I am very well. Very nice to be here. It's really nice to meet you. I am intrigued by your book, Superstition, The History of Common Folk Beliefs. This is such, not only a fascinating history, but a fascinating history, but a fascinating psychology. So the first question is, is what brought you to studying this, the history of folkloric beliefs? So, I mean, my background is anthropology and archaeology. Well, that'd do it.

Which will do it, which are both interested in, in kind of human culture and how people have negotiated their way through landscapes and society. I'm deeply interested in people and particularly how historically people have kind of coped with different problems or related to their environment, that kind of thing over the centuries. Because I find that rather than us being particularly modern and people in the past being very different from us, actually you find that the kind of same key theme come up again and again, kind of find reassuring and incredible at the same time. I do too. And yet when I knew that I was going to interview you, I was thinking superstitious, I'm not a superstitious person. And then I started to think about it. And I was like,

oh shit. Yeah. I do salute magpies and I do say touchwood with random stuff and I do have like little weird checks and things. Is that what we're talking about here when you say superstitions? Definitely. And it's kind of those little kind of bits of ritual behaviour. Ritual behaviour. Which you think that I'm a rational person. I consider myself to be, you know, I'm an atheist. I believe in science. Same. And still compulsively I touch wood. Yeah. What is that? I know. What I realized when I started to research the book, you know, there are so kind of key ideas that come out with superstitions that are often to do with people feeling out of control and that they want some kind of agency in their life. Sometimes there's a bit of humility behind superstitions. So, you know,

it's the idea that you're not going to kind of tempt fate or get too ahead of yourself. So things like, you know, when you say, I'm really going to do this, I'm really going to win this competition, No one kind of does that because you don't want to, we call it tempting fail. Yeah, jinxing it. Exactly, jinxing it as if somehow by we're kind of overreaching ourselves and we're tempting the spiritual world or whoever's out there. That is what it is, isn't it? That is what it means when you say jinx.

That's like literally a hex that you've put on something. Exactly. And I find that interesting because in a funny way, superstitious beliefs, they sit somewhere between kind of religious thinking and scientific thinking. in a sense that scientific thinking comes from a place of feeling like, you know, humans know everything, we're in control of everything and that things are predictable and measurable and that kind of stuff. And then religious thinking cuts control in the hand of a deity, for instance. And we just must do things that please that deity or, you know, we live a life according to another rule. where a superstition kind of sits in that kind of grey area in between where you believe in outside forces.

But fundamentally, you might have some control over that. So by crossing your fingers or, you know, saying a little prayer when you see a magpie. You feel like you have some kind of control or some agency, which I find kind of appealing because the most of the lives we feel quite out of control. That makes sense. It's such a weird part of the human psychology trying to like work out. where it fits because I'm very glad to hear that you say it's not quite religious, but it's not quite scientific, but it's somewhere in amongst this, this kind of ritualised behaviour that all of us have of like, almost like, well, I don't want to tempt fate somehow. Yeah.

The touching wood thing, do you like do it when you think of things in your head as well and then you have to touch wood or is that just me? It's not when I'm thinking in my head. Yeah, right. Okay, yeah, I don't do that either. Yeah. I do it when I say things out loud that I then think, oh, actually, it's always about something that's going to happen in the future. And you sort of think to yourself, well, I'd really like that to happen, but I'm just going to give myself that little extra chance. It's basically saying, God willing, I'm going to be here, you know, to actually experience the thing that's going to happen. It's a sort of little prayer of hope, really, in a way that nothing's going to come and get in the way before that event. Is it kind of like an OCD thing, like some of this stuff?

Like the way that OCD is kind of compulsively ritualistic and it's about trying to get a control that perhaps our superstitions are playing with that as well? That's such an interesting idea from the outside. It seems like OCD is possibly the kind of extreme end of the spectrum of superstitious behaviour, especially as it relates to control. From what I understand about OCDB, it's about you touch this thing at a certain amount of times and by doing that, you've regained some kind of control over what's going to happen. It'd be interesting to find out if the kind of people that have obsessive-compulsive behaviours are are similar kinds of people that are particularly kind of superstitious. I'm sure there's probably

some kind of crossover. Obviously, it kind of OCD takes that into the area of sort of mental health problems and things, whereas superstition is a kind of more generalized, just sort of daily behaviour, really. I wouldn't think that it was OCD when I'm saluting magpies, but then when you actually break that down, Kate, why are you waving at birds? Because you think that that might, you know, make your day more lucky. I've never tried to not do it. I suppose that would be the test, is how do I feel if I don't do it? Do I feel really anxious? Yeah, exactly. And anxiety is one of the key kind of emotions related to superstitions. When people have done research studies about the kind of people that are most likely to be superstitious, they tend to have two key characteristics. One is

that they're control freaks, and the second is that they're worriers. That makes sense. I include myself in that, despite the fact that, I'm not massively superstitious, but I engage in superstitious behaviour and I would definitely say I'm a worrier and I'd definitely say I'm a control freak. So that kind of fits for me with the kind of personality of people that tend to kind of believe in those sorts of things. I mean, we're all worriers. We are to a greater or lesser extent. Is there anybody who's like out there raw dogging it, not saluting magpies, not being careful that don't walk underland, does anyone at all who just doesn't have any of this stuff who's just taking on life? There are loads of sane, rational people.

You live perfectly happy lives without engaging in superstitions. And there are groups of people who tend to engage in superstitious behaviour as well. And it tends to be people who are either going through extreme phases in their lives or who feel like they don't have as much control in their lives or access to what people might call formal power. So that's people like young people, children, women, soldiers. Soldiers. Historically, soldiers have been very strong.

superstitious, sailors, people who are at the kind of mercy of either other people's decisions or, you know, larger power structures, that kind of thing. I think that's really interesting because it's a kind of human response. It's a very human response to feeling worried and scared about the things that are going to happen to you. I'd have been superstitious if I was a soldier in the First World War. You know, I'd have carried a pocketful of lucky charms. I think I have seen in the Science Museum, they've got a collection of charms, of soldiers in the First World War, of like, lucky charms and pendants and things that they were carrying around the trenches. Yeah.

You could buy them. That's crazy. People made a tidy profit out of selling little trinkets. There were sometimes little babies or little shamrocks or bullets. I mean, you know, it's like the baldric joke from Blackadder were about having your name on the bullet. So you couldn't get shot by the bullet with your name. But yeah, there was a tidy trade in good luck charms for First World War soldiers because it was so bloody terrifying. you know, facing almost certain death.

I mean, that makes sense, doesn't it? Absolutely. But, you know, I was reading the other day at Roman soldiers. They used to have a superstition ready to go into battle. And if one of your colleagues sneezed on the right of you, it was a brilliant sign that, you know,

the battle was going to go well. But if someone sneezed on the left, it was curtains. And you think, oh, my God, you know, can you imagine the kind of tension just before you're about the end of battle? Yeah, the pressure. And all these funny little omens

and signs. that people were looking for, just to kind of give you the edge. Do you know, I've just thought as well, like, if there are people listening to this going, I'm not superstitious, okay, I don't believe in any of that. I've just thought of another group of people who engage in incredibly superstitious behavior, sports fans, so many friends that say things like, I've got to wear my lucky shirt, or my team only win if I'm wearing these socks, or like that kind of thing. So true, and sports players as well are often deeply superstitious.

You know, we were, my husband and I watching Wimbledon the other day, and, you know, so many players bounce the balls a certain number of times. Was it Radnade and the Del? It was almost a tick that he would do before every serve, where it was, you know, touch both the ears, you know, and this kind of stuff. But it had to be done, you know, otherwise if you don't do it, you're not going to perform. And so it gives you that little extra bump. But you're absolutely right about people wearing lucky shirts for their teens,

as if it might just push them over the edge and, you know, give them that extra good luck. Yeah. It's control again, isn't it? You can't control it, but you've kind of got it into your head that maybe if I did this, then somehow it's like a talisman. Yeah, definitely. And in a funny way, it kind of takes, superstitions do another useful thing, which is they kind of take blame away from the individual.

Ooh. If you believe in superstitions that there are forces beyond the world that are kind of controlling your life or that have, have an influence on your life. If something goes wrong, it's not really your fault. It's because I like that. Or maybe someone didn't wish you good look or that guy. You know, you didn't have the right pair of pants on that day, that kind of thing. It's not because of, it's not because you did something wrong. It's because the charm didn't work or the pants gods failed you. The gods of the lucky pants. Let you down. Exactly. Failed you. I suppose actually thinking about it,

like crossing your fingers. That's a super. as well, isn't it? Yeah, definitely. And that's an interesting one because that's where superstition meets religion. Ooh. The idea of crossing your fingers,

people think, comes from very early Christianity. So when Christianity first came out as a faith, it was a secret faith because you weren't allowed to practice it because if you did, you'd be persecuted. I mean, this is, you know, just after the time of Jesus

in the first few centuries, AD. It was like being part of, of a secret club and so to make the sign that you were part of this club if you met someone a fellow Christian you cross your fingers because it made the sign of the cross but weirdly crossing your fingers you also you don't just do it kind of like oh fingers crossed good look you do fingers crossed when you're telling a fib I haven't thought of that one you do which is a kind of strange contradiction that one gesture can mean two things and apparently that comes from the idea early Christians, when they were challenged by the Roman authorities, whether they were Christian or not,

they had to tell a lie and say, they had to have to denounce their faith and say, no, no, I'm not a Christian, all the while crossing their fingers behind their backs. So they were kind of asking for divine forgiveness by crossing their fingers but hiding it. And so I think that's a really interesting way in which one gesture has two meanings depending on how it's used. Wow. And it's linked kind of faith and religion and the idea that early religious people didn't have a problem with using superstitious behaviours in a way that later on in history, religion and superstition knocked heads and started to become competing ideas. Interesting. I'll be back with Sally after this short break. Hi, it's Dan Snow here from Dan Snow's history hit podcast. So we've got

a massive conventional war on the European mainland and there are ever more signs of climate breakdown. If you're trying to make sense of all the wild things we're living through, my podcast, Dan Snow's History Hit, is here to help. Our expert historians, thinkers and storytellers, unravel the history behind the headlines so you can navigate the news with confidence and clarity. Dan Snow's History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. I have any idea where touching wood comes from. I'm just fascinated by that one because that's definitely one that I do. Yeah. So, as with all these kind of folk traditions, it's quite difficult to unpick a fact from analysis and a lot of what we know about say for instance

Celtic culture comes from sources that were written a long time after the fact however that said generally speaking lots of different cultures pre kind of Christianity that had a type of religion called animism which is where objects including things in nature have spirits so everything has a spirit So the river has a spirit, you know, the clouds have a spirit, all that can think. And trees had spirits and that this would have come from the fact that also people who lived so closely connected with their landscape would have relied on trees for so many things. So, you know, not only, you know, timber and food, but also, you know, medicines and that kind of thing. And certain trees became much more symbolic than others. So, for instance, in kind of Western folklore, trees like the yew are really sacred and important

because not only are they deeply poisonous, most parts of the yew tree are really poisonous and we have been used historically for lots of different things. But also, yew trees live spectacularly long time, hundreds and hundreds of years. I mean, the oldest year we think at the moment is about one and a half thousand years old, and that's in this country. Holy shit. I know. It's amazing.

They are so long lived. So cultures would then see these trees and think, wow, this isn't only a tree that's really potent, but it's also everlasting. And so the idea of kind of longevity, immortality, something that obviously has very special powers, would be incredibly important to a community. And if something is that important to a culture, a lot of the time it has to be shown appreciation. And that's often in the form of sacrifice or rituals surrounding it. So for instance, the Vikings had traditions to do with worshipping trees, which involved sacrificing various creatures in a certain kind of ritualistic and certain times of the year. Even up until the 19th century in this country, we believe in wood fairies and wood sprites

and things. And even the word druid, we think, comes from drew, which means tree and wid, which means to know. And so druids were people who had a very special. relationship with trees. Sorry, that's a very long-winded way of saying. Touching trees is about plugging into that power. So plugging into that, that energy and that kind of otherworldly power that people thought resided in trees. Interestingly, different cultures touch different things. Okay. So the Italians don't touch wood. They touch iron. Instead, they say tocaferra,

which means touch iron. And for then, that does the same thing. You know, you can go, ooh, touch wood. They touch iron for good luck. I just found that, you know, interesting that the same idea is expressed in a different way, in different... Different places. Yeah. I'm sure that I either read or I saw it on a documentary, and it was about this very thing, and it was about superstitions, and they were making the case that everyone has a base level of superstition. And they did an experiment where they got a group of scientists, so very, very logical, rational, scientific people. And then they gave each of them a photograph of a loved one, someone that they really, really loved.

And then all they were asked to do was tear the photograph up. tear it up into little pieces. Oh, no. And none of them could do it. What a brilliant experiment. Isn't that amazing? They just couldn't, rationally, they all knew that nothing is going to happen to their loved one, but they couldn't do it.

And I don't think I could do it. That's so interesting. I wonder what's behind that, that it's not just a kind of intellectual idea that you're tearing up. No. A representation of someone you really love. So why would you do it? It was like the fear that something would happen to them.

You might be hurting them. Yeah. I mean, how bad would you feel? Like, you know, if you'd torn the picture of your husband up and then you got home and you'd had an accident or something. But you just, like, they just couldn't do it. And I don't think I could do it, which is weird. No, I don't. And funnily enough, I don't know if this rings a bell, but so I've got three kids and they're all different ages.

I've had a lot of teeth over years, like, teeth that have fallen out. I can't throw them away. I keep coming. Yeah. Because I cannot possibly put a tooth in the bin because it's a part of my, part of my child. Isn't that interesting? What the hell am I going to, you know, what are we going to do with a tin full of teeth?

It's really, it's slightly kind of creepy. And I don't keep their nail clippings on things. But I've kept bits of their hair. I've kept little shoes that they've worn. You know, they're all things that are that they've kind of either have come from them or they've worn children's shoes, especially they mold to the foot of the child. And so I keep them because it's not just a shoe. It's like a little kind of representation of a stage in there.

childhood. I think a lot of people do that. I think actually loads of people do that. I think most people do that. And again, it's that thing of like, if you try and break it down, but like, well, what is it that I'm scared of? Because I don't have a formalised belief system. I don't actually believe in this stuff. But like, what? Do I actually subconsciously have a belief in spirits?

It's a weird thing, isn't it? I think everyone's got that. And I wonder, you know, what you were saying about the documentary about ripping up the blood crap. You do wonder if it's a kind of essential part of who we are that's really, really ancient, that's really, really primeval that we believe in something beyond what we can see. Like, it's a just in case, isn't it? It's like, I don't know what it is, but just on the off chance. Definitely. Most cultures seem to have superstitious

behaviours, which would suggest that it's a universal behaviour and a universal kind of phenomenon and that it's a response to daily experiences that we all experience like death, bad look, illness, bad weather, crop harvests going wrong, you know, injury, all the things that we want to kind of avoid. We have these little kind of just things that maybe might just tip of balance in our favour. I want to take you back to what you mentioned a little bit earlier when you said about how the church and superstition, like the early church, the kind of butted heads, because that's a really interesting. development because, and I know there'll be plenty of people of faith listening to this, but there could be an argument to be made that entire organised religion is just like OCD gone man. Like the whole thing is like formalised rituals and there's so much of these superstitious things in religious faith that you have to go and you have to say these things and you have to

worship like this. So how does it get to the point with the Christian church where they're going, our stuff is okay? The things that we think that you should do to avoid getting in trouble and be okay is fine, but all of this stuff isn't. Like that seems to be a real state of cognitive dissidents to me. Yeah, so definitely. And it relates to kind of wider ideas about magical thinking and witchcraft. So for a long time, you know, Christianity Ombesh, obviously at the beginning of, well, 2,000 years ago. And for quite a long time, it sat kind of sat uneasily, but it sat next to other belief systems.

And it didn't really kind of vie for ultimate control. and then you see kind of slowly emerging sort of early medieval period so you're talking kind of 10th century onwards an idea that power should be centralised and that Christianity can be the only one true faith and it's probably more linked to money and control and that kind of thing which was all part of a bigger political system than a kind of spiritual idea

but basically the end result is that Christianity was vital, for the same business as it was a superstition. And so it didn't want people coming to church and doing one thing, but then going somewhere else and doing other things. So it wanted to be exclusive. It became apparent that, well, certainly the church didn't want you to be superstitious. However, most people ignore that. So right up until, well, even now,

it isn't necessarily difficult for people to be deeply religious and superstitious. And superstitious. And so there's been lots of studies, a US study, where most people who declare themselves to be superstitious are also religious or certainly believe in the Christian church. And I find that really interesting because you think, well, those two doctrines are completely different. It's almost like buying a lottery ticket and also, you know, doing something else that we're bringing a good luck. It's kind of hedging your bets. And you see evidence of that in fascinating places like I've done a bit of research on witchies marks, which are ritual cards. carvings that you find.

Just about to ask you about witch's bottles. Look at that. Segwayed perfectly. Tell me about witch's marks. So witch's marks are everywhere, actually, but often brilliantly hidden. And they're carvings that people made predominantly from sort of 14th century up to the middle of the 19th century, that people carved into timber and plaster and stone and that kind of thing.

And they're like little prayers, basically. They're visual prayers. So they're usually, we've got one in the vine. I've got a few actually in the barn here on the farm and we have daisy wheels which are designed to be a pattern that would capture evil spirits. But you find them in churches, you find a lot in churches

where people have obviously been sitting on pews, listening to sermons and then going, you know, and scratching away on the side of a pew or on a colon during a sermon. They're praying to God and praying to superstition at the same time. So people obviously didn't feel like it was an issue, believing in far. And you've got like really,

early churches that often have those little grotesque carvings that the she-luner gigs, which are these, for anyone's listening, they're often above the church door and they're like female forms but grotesque. And they're often holding their legs open and they've got this massive exposed vulva. And that's like a weird, why are you on a church? Like obviously put there quite deliberately as well. Yeah. And I think that's something to do with the early church having to adopt earlier symbols. So it's easier to kind of bring a crowd along if you use some of their motifs and their cultural things. And so you find often with, I've just been doing some research about why churches are where

they are in villages. And often they're cited on places that were historically important to previous cultures. So they kind of, us up isn't the right word because that sounds like it was deliberately kind of deceptive. But they're often built on places of sacred significance and used, like you talk about, symbols and signs and motifs and things that people would have gone, ooh, I recognize that that's part of my culture. So this must be part of my culture too. Yeah, yeah. Just because I mention witches bottles, we should explain what they are.

There's been like a few found all over the place and they tend to be like buried at the back of fireplaces or in the ground or in walls of very old houses and the bottles that are filled with all kinds of mad crap, often urine, nails, bits of leather and they're supposed to be there. Is it to keep witches away? Is that what they're there for? Well, two types, it seems. One is for that reason that it's a kind of people often put pins in them and nails that were supposed to hurt the witch especially they were made from iron because we were talking about iron being touch iron yeah yeah because iron's quite powerful as always historically being a powerful material urine it's a kind of essence of the person who is trying to scare the witch off

or there are also bits of hair that kind of stuff so sometimes they were designed to deter witch or they were designed to entice a witch to then be tried to in the bottle, so sometimes because there's one in the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, which is amazing and has lots of kind of these weird and quirky things. They have some witches bottles which claim to contain

the spirit of a witch, so you mustn't open it. No, don't fucking open that. Why have I said that? I don't believe in witches. Why have I just... I mean, even kind of academics are really superstitious about it, and they actually opened one recently as part of a conference, and people were quite

uncomfortable about it, because they were sort of thinking oh what are we going to unleash here and it still holds a lot of weight those kind of fears yeah it's often kind of bits of hair and fingernails and things that could hurt the witch like sharp objects things that you're talking

about things stuffed up fireplaces and into walls and stuff but they a similar thing is we live in a farming community and it's not until that long ago that people would if your herd came down with something horrendous and it would have been put them

mouth or, but they didn't know what it was in those days. You would take the heart of one of the animals and stick lots of pins and nails into it and then bury it and hide it in the chimney or hide it somewhere significant in a threshold. You usually put it where they think your spirits come and go from building. So it's often like doorways, windows, you know, that kind of stuff. And the idea was that it would deter the witch from coming back or it would break the spell or that kind of thing. I would cause the witch pain she would leave you alone. I love all that

kind of stuff. It's so barkingly mad. It is, isn't it? Don't go give him witches bottles to people as a housewarming present because it's you can't just be peeing in a bottle and putting a load of nails in it. No one wants that as a priest. I know, you're saying right, just bring a bottle of wine.

It's much easier. Let's sort of bring it right up to the modern day because I think I take a lot of comfort from what you're saying of like this has always been around like most people have this, there's something quite familiar about it. But is there a sort of a darker side to this superstitious element of ourselves that like it plays out in our lives? It's not always that helpful to have this stuff. Yeah, yeah, I totally agree with you.

And I think one of the problems with superstitions is that it affects real world decisions that you make and not always for the better. Like the number 13. Yeah, exactly. If you live in a house that's the number 13. statistically it's worth less than a house with a different number. No way. Or that lawyers and estate agents find that people won't complete a conveyance, you know, buy a house basically on the 13th of their only month.

People deliberately avoid contracts and legal things and major purchases on the 13th day, which seems extraordinary when it's one of the biggest financial decisions you'll ever make and you're letting superstition guide you. But also things, sort of sad things like, so black cats are the ones that are, most likely to end up in animal shelters. Yeah.

And most likely to be the subject of cruelty, which is so upsetting. And there are kind of residual ways that we view animals. I'd write a lot about animals and wildlife and how some of our attitudes to wildlife are shaped by sort of ancient superstitions. So, for instance, traditionally we've been quite unkind to animals like toads. Yes. Because we associate them with witchcraft and bad omens and that kind of thing. they're now a species in trouble, but it's quite difficult to get people engaged about caring

about tones when so many of them don't like them. You know, there is a truly dark side of superstitious thinking, especially when it relates to witchcraft and ideas about witchcraft, which are still prevalent across the world. It's not the kind of, you know, the positive kind of wicker style of witchcraft, but we're talking about people who, you know, genuinely believe in devil possessions and is the cross of globe? I was reading a sister. the other day that's something like over 40% of Americans believe that the devil genuinely exists and you think that's quite a high percentage of people who believe that they are genuinely Satan yeah there's actually a big red fella like underneath your feet exactly just getting back

to kind of negative things even on a sort of less serious level but often just believing in superstition counteracts rational decisions and rational ideas about things so you might gamble a bit more than you should do. Or you might take a few more risks, unhelpful risks or uncalculated risks than you might do, all of which have negative, you know, negative effect. There's no coincidence that most gamblers are also deeply superstitious people and often, you know, they don't win. So I find that kind of interesting. There's definitely a dark side to a sort of superstitious belief, but try eradicating it. I don't think it'll happen. It seems to be very, very easy to provoke in people as well. Like people just never want to take the chance, like the witches bottles and a room full of

academics who just didn't want to open it. It's like it's very easy to provoke that odd, irrational fear in people about stuff. Definitely. And especially when it relates to things that you really love, like your family or things that you really value. What do you think is the future of superstition? I mean, as we're becoming more and more scientifically aware and as, you know, scientific, I mean, maybe science is in some ways a type of talisman that we wave around to have some control over things. But do you think that we're going to get less superstitious? I mean, will people still be throwing salt over their shoulders, not walking under ladders in 300 years' time? That's such a great question. Part of someone who believes in rational progress, you'd hope that that

was the case. But evidence pretty much suggests the opposite. I mean, it's no coincidence that in the last 10 years, which have been particularly chaotic in terms of the economy, climate, you know, know, COVID, or that kind of belief in magical thinking of which superstition is a part is massive and is only getting bigger. Basically, wherever there's chaos and worry and anxiety, superstition rears its head again and again. And that's a kind of human condition. So I don't think you never get rid of it.

Speaking of someone who constantly touches wood, so. Yes. What do you think of the... good things about it. Are there positives for this? Or is this just kind of like a leftover legacy from when we just really didn't know what the hell was going on? Like, are there good things to it? Yeah, I think so. I've thought a lot about this. And so you have to kind of sort of think, you know, we started off talking about the kind of psychology of it all and what people get psychologically out of superstition. And I think there are a lot of kind of proven benefits or proven reasons why

people do it. So, for instance, there's lots of studies about when people have a lucky charms or lucky underpants and that kind of thing we were talking about, you know, amulets, basically, people feel less anxious, which gives them an improved performance. Say, for instance, you're going for a job interview, you wear your lucky pants, you're feeling less anxious, you'll probably perform better. Makes sense. The flip side of that is obviously if you forget your pants, and then you'll do worse. I think there are also kind of, it's a feeling of sort of agency about your life and that,

you know, you have some level of control. that's going to be a bit of a mood booster and got to make you feel like you're not a cork bobbing around in the sea you've got some kind of... Power. Power, yeah, it's about power, really, and it's about trying to wrestle back

some kind of power when you feel powerless. So my final question is when you were researching your book in the history of folkloric beliefs, I'm going to imagine that these beliefs change and shift and things exist and then they don't exist again. And people come up with their own weird talismans as well and rituals that they do.

Did you find like really weird ones in the course of your research? Oh God. I mean, there are some really gruesome ones. And one springs to mind called Dead Man's Hand, which thankfully we don't do anymore. But in the days of hanging and capital punishment, people thought that the moment that people died or the moment that a criminal died was a very particularly potent moment in the spiritual realm. because their soul was leaving and people would often, at that very moment where someone dropped on the gallows or just after it had happened, babies or people with illnesses or especially kind of facial disfigurements would grab the hand of the dead hand of the person and lay

on them. And you read counts of people kind of in the crowd, because obviously I mean people went to hangings as a good day out, you know, but people would bring along sickly babies and they'd pass and look to the executioner. Holy shit. And the executioner would kind of grab the hand of the hanging person and kind of rub it on the baby to give them good look. Or people with kind of massive sort of tumours on their face would come and kind of go, and grind on me.

And used to think, oh, but in an age when medicine was so shockingly bad, or dangerous or expensive, you kind of think, well, if you think that's going to give you half a shot, I'd probably do the same. But yeah, let's not revive that one for many, for many, many reasons. Oh, Sally, you have been so much fun to talk to today. Oh, thank you, Kay.

You too. People want to know more about you and your work. Where can they find you? So they can find me on my website, which is salliculfard.com.com. Or I'm on Instagram, which is at salcalfaulfarred. or just I've got endless books written way too many

which you can find in all good bookshops and I write about folk law and history and animals and country life and all that kind of stuff so. Thank you so much you've been... You're really welcome. You've been wonderful to talk to. Thank you.

Thank you for listening and thank you so much to Sally for joining me and if you like what you heard please don't forget to like, review and subscribe wherever it is that you get your podcasts. And if you'd like us to explore a subject or if you'd just fancy dropping by to say hi, you can email us at betwixt at historyhit.com. Join me again, Betwixt the Sheets,

The History of Sex Scandal in Society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast was edited by Chavon Dale and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.